photo Jean-Didier-Gazeau
more info:
https://caveat.be/produsers/stijn-van-dorpe.html
https://www.ete78.com/portfolio-item/stijn-van-dorpe/
Some notes on Curating is writing the future, a portrait’ in preparation of a lecture:
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‘Curating is writing the future, a portrait’ the title of the project/exhibition I did at été 78 (in the frame of caveat) has started from regularly hold encounters with Oliver Gevart the driving force behind the initiative and an art collector (what is a usually working method for him). During these meetings I did try to understand and get to know what été 78 stands for, what the motives were behind it, what the ambitions of Olivier Gevart were and what Oliver (and Nicole his partner who was less involved), what their visions on the gallery and more broader on society were. This led me to map some (what I thought were for them and the gallery) important places and conceived these places as a Micro environment, in which I wanted to go into for my work and related exhibition.
draft invitation
The private house, which also contains the private art-collection of Olivier and Nicole.
The small give away library a concept brought into the street by Nicole and Olivier (as an idea to engage with the neighborhood, render some social activity with the goal of more social cohesion). Reaching/facing to the street (making contact with neighbours) seemed to be important for them. The library, a wooden case was built some years ago by students of ‘convivial mouvement d’insertion des réfugiés’ (a workplace and training program for newcomers/mainly ‘legalised’ refugies which the aim to help them integrate in society) (so the library was made in the carpentry department)
Le fonds du logement de la Région Bruxelles-Capitale at the other site of the street. (2 motives which led to this choice: Olivier had a conflict with them during the renovations at his house/gallery (something that had to do with a crane) and his current job is very related, le fonds du logement provides social loans for people who want to buy a house -Olivier (of his part) has a compagnie providing social loans for starters in sustainable entrepreneurship.)
Contemporary art gallery (a kind of white space/cube in spirit, but with quiet some disruptions)
At all these spaces a person or persons were connected with who I wanted to make and made contact, cooperated, related… Olivier (here referred to as the co-initiator of the project and the art-collector), the teachers of convivial giving the carpentry course, the civil servants of the fond du logement, the curator of my future exhibition at été 78 and of caveat, Florence Cheval.
Every encounter had its own dynamics and stories and has lead to specific interventions, space making, conflicts, research etcetera. Every encounter left also a trace that get a place in the exhibition held at été 78 in september/october 2019.
In a nut shell:
About my cooperation with the teachers of convivial: at the first meeting it was difficult to gain confidence, I had not yet a clear idea what we could do (what I wanted to do), so it remained very abstract for them (and beside art is often something people feel very uncomfortable with). They told me that they couldn’t do something extra beside the lessons, because half a year (the time of the course) is very short to learn the students the basics of carpentry. That was also the reason they didn’t go into commissions of externs anymore. When I went back the second time I had a clear proposition. I ask them to make frames with the students in which they would use the basic exercises of carpentry to ornament the frame (saw and cut exercises). The teachers were very positive about this idea - one of them did start immediately to think with me about different possibilities for the frame. Another important element of the work was that I attended the workshop myself and also produced some pieces/slats of the frames. I even turned out to be a good student. (this cooperation worked out really nice, there was a growing trust and the atmosphere during the working process was very interesting).
About my cooperation with the teachers of convivial: at the first meeting it was difficult to gain confidence, I had not yet a clear idea what we could do (what I wanted to do), so it remained very abstract for them (and beside art is often something people feel very uncomfortable with). They told me that they couldn’t do something extra beside the lessons, because half a year (the time of the course) is very short to learn the students the basics of carpentry. That was also the reason they didn’t go into commissions of externs anymore. When I went back the second time I had a clear proposition. I ask them to make frames with the students in which they would use the basic exercises of carpentry to ornament the frame (saw and cut exercises). The teachers were very positive about this idea - one of them did start immediately to think with me about different possibilities for the frame. Another important element of the work was that I attended the workshop myself and also produced some pieces/slats of the frames. I even turned out to be a good student. (this cooperation worked out really nice, there was a growing trust and the atmosphere during the working process was very interesting).
photo Jean-Didier-Gazeau
The attempt to cooperate with le fonds du logement, became a very hard and difficult path with at the end a bad outcome (it is impossible to go into details here but there are some interesting documents and emails illustrating the course of events). But I will give briefly a chronology of the events: First (after many efforts) I could arrange a meeting with Linda who was the substitute communication manager. On that meeting I talked about my idea or wish to bring one or more art pieces of Oliviers collection into some offices of the servants. She discussed this later with the direction/management and let us know by an email that it was not allowed to bring an art piece in the offices because it would disturb the employees (people would run in and out). But they aloud on hanging an art work in the atrium (a compromise). We (Olivier and me) accepted the consensus of hanging a piece (a photograph by Vincen Beeckman) in the atrium but for me this could only be a step in a process to a more precise and more meaningful intervention. Le fond du logement allowed us later I to arrange a meeting in the council room with the civil servants to do a new proposal. But the agreement with the fonds du logement was clear, the employees could only participate on ‘in personal capacity’ (ten persoonlijke titel). On that meeting I proposed or rather asked if some employees were willing to place a small tractor, an art piece of Floris Hovers, on the corner of their working desk during a certain period, and this under the employees own responsibility. (image: the tractors are made by remnants of the furniture creations of Floris Hovers, when he creates assemblages with these unused remnants (waste), he calls himself an artist (instead of a designer) and the assemblages made with non-productive remnants become thus works of arts). That meeting became something (and its difficult to find the right words) very strange. (to clarify that I will read this fragment of a letter I wrote later to Linda/the communication manager)
photo Jean-Didier-Gazeau
With curator Florence Cheval we focused on our practises and position as respectively a curatorial perspective and an artistic practise with curatorial aspects. We had conversations about this and there was some writing back and forth and then we decide to each take on one of the other’s tasks. I asked Florence to imagine a way to give a shape to our exchange in the context of the exhibition space in Eté78. Florence proposed me, and I quote, she proposed me “to write for me/instead of me/as if you were at my place - the second part of the exchange we had on curatorial positionings. This written proposal would echo the discussions we had about the fact that the funding for Caveat has ended, and problematise - with your own words - issues of continuity, interdependency, precarity from a curator's perspective (not an artists' perspective, this time - though the result may be quite the same?…). The proposal is that you sit at my place and imagine how you would respond to this situation…”
Finally Florence added in the exhibition a hand written quote of a fragment of one of her emails on the wall not to striking, close to the ground.
Back to the regular talks with Olivier, the co-initiator and driving force behind of été 78 these filled cans (see picture below) relate to a testimony of him. At one of our meetings he complained about some vernissages at the gallery that many students of the Brussels academy of fine arts attended, but where they didn’t hardly look at the works of art and seemed only to be interested in the beers. This story stroke me because it touches the conflict between his wish to purity (also the white purity of the artworld/cube) on the one hand and finding acces to the street and a broader public (life) on the other. I decided to only serve water on the opening and made the cans part of the installation. However I filled one of the cans with vodka. (Which is another link (even a coincidental one) that has to do with the former job of Olivier, he use to trade in ethyl alcohol which is the main constituent of vodka)
photo Jean-Didier-Gazeau
The entire installation itself became on its turn an object related to Olivier as the art-collector. Because as we will see later he will inherit the responsibility of and care taking for the installation.
You see standards which carry contracts in 3 languages related to every cooperation or interference. They form for me a different level of the show and/or installation and connect the work with caveat/making contracts was the initial starting point of the project.
These contracts were activated during the opening with the involved people and later with the audience by different reading sessions/performances during the course of the exhibition.
photo Jean-Didier-Gazeau
Some notes on the contracts:
The contracts form a layer of the work that also connect the work with caveat/it was the initial starting point.
They have very different sensibilities and meanings related to their context. Sometimes they were a tool, once completely inappropriate.
Wood workshop: I couldn’t take it as a starting point/ working there was all about a growing trust / the contract is made after the facts / it is completely not representative for what happened/in a way it objectify the actors/ it felt for me even a bit aggressive - I experienced it later as a conceptual layer that lays above the very relational sensitive experience.
Housing fund: the attempt to make a contract made things visible about the structure and kind of bureaucracy of the company and working conditions of the employees.
With Florence the curator: the contract was made much more in harmony and functioned as an exercise in scanning and challenge our role, it was very much also an exercise in equality. The contract functioned as a tool.
The initial contract with Olivier as co-initiator: was more a formalisation of the starting point and working methode he use to apply. There was not much tension in it
With Olivier as collector: it is the most explicit political document. It excludes the collector from speculation and ownership. In the exhibition it is also a kind of window to the future (a resumption and continuation of the piece)…)
to check the contracts:
for related essay:
